Lust For Youth - Bodies In Barrels




Expertly crafted dungeon dwelling synth driven electronics from Lars Hannes Norrvide, Loke Rahbek and Malthe Fischer that is completely unlike the previous two tapes. C24 released on NNA Tapes in 2010.

Vive la France!

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Lust For Youth - Neon Lights Appear




Fourteen minutes of taped primitive synthdancedirge released on Posh Isolation in 2011.

Vive la France!

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LFY - Saluting Rome




"White, boyish, dance music" from Lust For Youth that was released as a C20 on Posh Isolation and as a 12" EP on Avant! in 2012.

Vive la France!

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The Haunting - Songs For Sleeping Fog

My favorite album by this band, released as a one-sided LP in 2005 on Mike's Gods of Tundra label in an edition of 100 copies. The title is more apt than usual.

The Haunting - Songs For Sleeping Fog 

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Phil Taylor




When I was a kid, Motörhead ruled my life. They were supposed to be METAL, nah ... proper rock and roll. I wore the badge with pride and for my "sins" had to have fistfights with punks because I was apparently the enemy. Soon after, the same people were coming to me asking to buy my Motörhead collection.

Philip John (Philthy Animal) Taylor was the drummer in what will always remain the definitive line up. The jpeg is the cover of the No Class single, it came in three covers each with an individual member of the band on the front. I bought Phil's cover without hesitation. A proper drummer and cool as fuck!

I only ever got to see him play live once ... on the Ace Of Spades tour at the Manchester Apollo (at the age of 14, right down the front, off my tits on mushrooms and cider and walked out deaf!).

Phil died yesterday and was just past his 61st birthday. His passing has just been made public. He is one of the people responsible for showing me that there was more to life than the unutterably grey and bleak humans that surrounded me. I love him a lot!

This is the live (and appropriately named) Golden Years 12" EP released on Bronze Records in 1980.

Nice one Philthy!

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The Haunting - Canine Blues

Double cassette set in a handmade painted box in 2008, edition of 41 copies. The idea was to quickly raise money to help pay medical bills for Mike & Tara Connelly's dog.

tape 1
tape 2 


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The Haunting - Feeding Chamber

2007 cassette on Gods of Tundra.

The Haunting - Feeding Chamber

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People of America - We Are Fucked

There's not much information to share about this chunk of mushroom-soaked weirdness by a band that's otherwise unknown to me (I assume they're American?). The inner sleeve tells us that ""All music recorded entirely between the hours of 11pm on Tuesday November 2 2004 and 6am on Wednesday November 3 2004. Recorded in Boston and Atlanta." Now, I'm no expert, but it seems that the music would have to have been recorded while the band was driving. Huh? Released in 2004 as a CDR in a numbered edition of 25 copies by Nokahoma Records.

People of America - We Are Fucked

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va - Motop 2

By 1991, CDs were still expensive for underground artists to produce themselves and LPs were falling out of favor. Those seeking a wider audience than the cassette trading network had to find a label or else they could band together and make a co-operative compilation. The second volume of "Motop" was compiled by Nicko Selen (aka Ilo Istatov, a member of De Fabriek, O.R.D.U.C., and others) and released as a CD by IF Records, again financed by the artists themselves. It's a nice time capsule, with many excellent tracks by artists both known and obscure. I must have bought this for the Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock and S*Core tracks. There is also noise by Alain Basso (aka Phaeton Derneire Danse) & Ilo Istatov, Anenzephalia, Delta-Sleep-Inducing Peptide, Mike Shannon, Maeror Tri, Jorg Thomasius, Genocide Organ, Frak, De Fabriek, a fantastic collaborative piece by Merzbow & Kapotte Muziek, Wasp King, Royal Flush, LSD (who also appeared on the first volume), and Value Stress.

va - Motop 2

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Various - Idealistic Idiot 2




Odal, Nails Ov Christ, John Hudak, Urbain Autopsy, A Violated Body, Lyke Wake et cetera, et cetera.

Our work here is done ...

Part One

Part Two

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Various - Idealistic Idiot 3




This C90 takes a different tack to the others in the series in that there are only three artists featured. Side A has Dirk Serries' Vidna Obmana and Markus Arvidson's Arvid Tuba. Side B features Klaus Groh providing a 45 minute piece called Dadaland (so you know exactly where that is heading).

I didn't split Side A ... just couldn't get it to match up to the tracks listed on the j-card ... so I tidied it up a bit and here it is.

The entire series is wonderful but this is probably my favourite.

Idealistic Idiot 3

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Various - Idealistic Idiot 4




Odal, Enema Syringe, Solanaceae Tau, S.Core, Big City Orchestra, Andrew Chalk, Bercomize, Merz and more. You know the drill by now ...

Part One

Part Two

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Various - Idealistic Idiot 5




Odal, David Prescott, Due Process, Allan Conroy's Not 1/2 project, John Wiggins, ESruk and more ...

C90 released on Nihilistic Recordings in 1987. Combine the parts to gain access to esoteric evangelism.

Part One

Part Two

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va - Idealistic Idiot 6

Compilation tape from 1987, featuring mail-art madness and idiotic ideals by corprophagic pop sensation Costes Cassette, DMDN, The Psychic Workshop, Esruk, Brume, the dependably wonderful John Hudak (whose entire corpus is required listening for anyone who visits this blog), Domaine Poetique (aka John Hudak & the also-very-amazing-all-the-time Mr. Jeph Jerman), Cephalic Index (a frequent contributor to compilation cassettes of this era), a screaming German maniac called Appi (whose LP I really ought to post here someday), Stream of Unconsciousness, Radical Change, LSD, scum maestro Odal (who is the idealist responsible for this series of comp tapes), and Ditto. I did not break the sides up into separate tracks and could not persuade the husband into doing it for me. If you have the time and patience to do so, contact us and maybe we'll re-post your more conveniently-indexed version.  Otherwise: tough.

va - Idealistic Idiot 6

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Natural Snow Buildings - Monsters/Depths

7" single on Blackest Rainbow, released in a run of 300 copies for Record Store Day 2012.

Natural Snow Buildings - Monsters/Depths

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Natural Snow Buildings - The Ladder




Of course, you already know that the exemplary Natural Snow Buildings are Mehdi Ameziane (aka Twinsistermoon) and Solange Gularte (aka Isengrind).

No doubt you are aware of their penchant for sneaking out items in very small numbers which has the unintended consequence of attracting the speculators who will proceed to encourage you to empty your bank account to obtain them. This is one such thing:

Less than two months ago Ba Da Bing! released Terror's Horns. The first 50 pre-orders (that you could only get via Grapefruit Records) came with this CD which is already being touted around for scandalous amounts of money. Anyway, it's great ... enjoy!

The Ladder

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Natural Snow Buildings - Live At Cragg Vale




C76 released on Hebden Bridge based Was Ist Das? last year. You begin to fully understand how great this is when you reach the section of applause on Side B and a member of the audience shouts "Bravo!" People actually still say bravo? Wow!

Live At Cragg Vale

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Natural Snow Buildings - I Dream Of Drone




Self-released five disc box set from 2008. Typically wonderful set of psychedelic drones featuring three prior releases and two hours of previously unheard material.

Sung To The North

Gorgons

Battle Gods

Norns

Between The Real And The Shadow

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va - Motop 1

Here is one of the all-time classic late-1980's experimental noise compilation LPs, "Motop 1". The concept was ripped straight from the idealistic (idiot?) international cassette-network underground. At the time, record production was still a risky investment. This was before the internet, before distributors cared about noise, before No Fun Fest, before people like Merzbow and Wolf Eyes could pay their electric bills by going on world tours. The idea was that artists could have a track on this LP if they paid for part of its production. If people chipped in, the record could be financed without anyone losing too much money. Frans de Waard compiled the tracks (and contributed a good one as Kapotte Muziek), IF Records released the vinyl in 1989, and there you are: noise by obscure weirdos like Totungsdelikt and Post Mortem had the chance to potentially expand their audience on a format viewed as somewhat more pro than self-made cassette tapes. And what a record it turned out to be!

The incessantly active De Fabriek appear here, because of course they do. Militia Chresti, also known as the HESS Group, contributed a track. Gazza November's Freek Kinkelaar would later change his "band" name to Brunnen and become 1/2 of both Wander and Beequeen. Dva Met Dva Nichts is better known by his initials, DMDN, and more recently as a member of the fantastic (and criminally under-rated) THU20. The not-Dutch contributors include provocative English power-electronics screamer Con-Dom, Belgian industrial (oh sorry, I mean "minimal synth") band Absolute Body ControlMerzbow, Luis Mesa, Phaeton Derniere Danse, Vidna Obmana (today known as Fear Falls Burning), New Carrolton (featuring Jeff Surak aka Violet, of Watergate Tapes and Zeromoon), and American/German genre-phobes Doc Wor Mirran. Then there are artists who sank back into the iron oxide mire, their tracks on "Motop 1" being some of the only surviving evidence of their work: Asod Dvi, O.R.D.U.C., Esruk, and Lampshade.

va - Motop 1

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Various - Acousmatrix: The History Of Electronic Music




This was a series curated by Konrad Boehmer and released on BV Haast Records. Initially, these were separate releases that came out between 1990 and 1991 before being re-released as a nine disc box set in 2005. The rest is self-explanatory ...

1: Gottfried Michael Koenig: Klangfiguren Il / Essay / Terminus I-Il / Output

2: Gottfried Michael Koenig: Funktionen

3: Luc Ferrari: Electronic Works

4: Henri Pousseur: Electronic Works

5: Konrad Boehmer: Electronic Works

6: Cologne - WDR: Early Electronic Music

7: Luciano Berio / Bruno Maderna: Electronic Works

8: Francis Dhomont: Cycle De L’Errance

9: Francis Dhomont: Les Dérives Du Signe

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